Claim your free gift now!

Choose 'The Society of Shame' for your book club, and I *will* send you a gift, unlike those bastards at PBS.

When I was a little kid in the late 70s/early 80s, I mainlined the kids’ shows on PBS: Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Mr. Rogers. (This was, of course, when I wasn’t out getting seventh-degree burns on metal playground slides, riding my bike without a helmet, dodging errant Jarts, and eluding kidnappers in white vans—all that classic GenX childhood stuff.)

At some point, Channel 13, the PBS station in the New York tri-state area where I grew up, ran a fundraiser where if you donated a certain amount, you got something called the “Sesame Street Grab Bag”—a canvas tote stuffed to the brim (or so I imagined) with any number of wondrous Sesame Street things: Books? Toys? Games? Tchockes? I did not know. All I knew was that I WANTED IT!

Pretty sure it looked something like this. But full of wonderful things.

I begged my parents, and eventually they relented and made a donation. (So they say.) For weeks, I waited with bated breath for my Sesame Street Grab Bag to arrive. Would it be in a giant box, I wondered? Or would everything be separate, and you had to put all the wonderful things into the bag yourself (because obviously, that was where I’d keep them)?

Day after day, I checked the mailbox and looked on the doorstep. I watched out the window for the mailman in his little white Jeep. I asked my mother over and over again if my Grab Bag had come yet.

Reader, it never did.

Supposedly my parents called Channel 13 to follow up. But given that this was, like, 1979, I’m guessing the recordkeeping for fundraisers consisted of very hairy people writing names and addresses down on legal pads, which were perhaps then typed up by women in polyester slacks, which they then passed along to whoever was in charge of Grab Bag distribution, and then…who know where it all went. Into enormous filing cabinets? The trash?

I’m guessing that somewhere in this whole process there was carbon paper involved.

Anyway. It was a lost cause.

Eventually, I accepted the fact that a Sesame Street Grab Bag was never to be mine. In the years that followed, I moved on to other obsessive desires: Lisa Frank stickers, Cabbage Patch Kids, Michael J. Fox. (Two of the three, I actually got.) Still, if that Grab Bag showed up on my doorstep tomorrow, I think I would be ecstatic.

It is in that spirit that I want to give YOU the thrill of a free gift in the mail. One that WILL COME!

That’s right! To the first 10 people who email to let me know that they’re going to read The Society of Shame (now in paperback!) with their book club, I will send a free SOCIETY OF SHAME GRAB BAG. (U.S. only)

I tried to do a little something with drapery here.

Just look at it! You get the tote bag, a signed paperback copy of the book, a bunch of nifty #YesWeRead / #YesWeBleed reversible bookmarks for your group, an inflatable swan beverage holder (beverage not included), and some teeny little plastic swans that are definitely a choking hazard. PLUS: If you want, I will visit your book club via Zoom to say hello and answer questions, schedule permitting! (Actually, I’m happy to do this for any book club.)

Why choose The Society of Shame for your book club? Well, ‘cuz it’s a fun, quick, entertaining read full of juicy topics for conversation: Cancel culture, menstrual mishaps, online activism, social media, infidelity, tweens, and the general craziness of our current cultural and political moment. Plus, swans: beautiful and beloved or ill-tempered and invasive? Discuss.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve got your book club on board to read The Society of Shame, email me at janeroper [at] gmail.com with the subject line “Book Club Grab Bag” (or something like that). Tell me when you plan to meet, the number of people in your group, your address, and whether you’d like me to pop in via Zoom.

If you are one of the first 10 people to write, I will—I SWEAR—mail you your FREE Society of Shame grab bag as a token of my heartfelt appreciation. Because unlike those public television bastards, I am a woman of my word.

And look, this is the honor system. Please only enter if you really, truly plan to read the book with your book club. (And by “book club” I don’t mean, like, you and one other person.) I will, of course, be delighted if just YOU, as an individual, read the book. But the swag is for clubs only. Thank you for understanding.

Also, please note: I actually only have nine inflatable swans to give away, so if you’re person #10, you don’t get a swan in your Grab Bag. Sorry! (But I’ll throw in a few extra bookmarks and choking hazard mini swans.)

BUT WAIT, there’s more! EVERYONE, regardless of whether or not they win a Grab Bag or even have a book club at all, is invited to download this nifty new Society of Shame Book Club Kit, featuring a discussion guide, playlist, cocktail recipe, and a friendly greeting from moi. (BTW: Thanks to everyone who helped crowd-source the playlist over on Facebook!)

Click me!

OK. That’s more than enough shameless self and Grab Bag promotion. Thank you for reading. I will leave you now (below the buttons) with a classic, psychedlic, funky-as-hell Sesame Street animation, featuring a song that has been lodged in my head—and quite possibly yours—since the Carter administration. Enjoy.